YouTube golfer Chance Taylor just pulled off the kind of upset that makes golf content so entertaining. He beat Bryson DeChambeau in the final of his own Backyard Games and walked away with the $100,000 prize. Taylor saved his best shot for the biggest moment, leaving DeChambeau stunned as the final ball settled close to the cup.
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“I can’t believe it all ended this way,” DeChambeau wrote on social media Thursday night, after losing his own challenge.
The finale wrapped up “Bryson’s Backyard Games,” a 10-day content series DeChambeau launched on September 22. He had teased it two days earlier with a cryptic “I’m coming home” post. Ten golf content creators competed in one-hole elimination matches at DeChambeau’s Dallas home, and the last player standing earned a three-hole shootout against DeChambeau for $100,000. The field featured Grant Horvat, George and Wesley Bryan, Brad Dalke, Sara Winter, Chazzy Golf, Martin Borgmeier, Rhett Anderson, Arlynn Spence, and Taylor.
The shootout was played on DeChambeau’s signature setup, including the now-famous blind shot over his own house. In the finale transcript DeChambeau shared, both players traded highlight-reel shots. On the house-shot hole, DeChambeau’s approach finished just two inches from the hole, prompting Taylor to say, “No way… that’s unbelievable. Wow, that’s pretty, pretty good hands.”
The two were tied after three holes, so the match went to a closest-to-the-pin playoff. Taylor’s shot landed within feet of the pin, and DeChambeau admitted, “I don’t like my odds,” before Taylor’s ball held its line for the win. “Chance, you are the first-ever Backyard Games champion,” DeChambeau told him. “This money is now yours.”
Under the rules DeChambeau laid out when he announced the series, the $100,000 would have gone to a random follower if he had won. Since Taylor won, he keeps the money.
The house shot wasn’t new territory for DeChambeau. In November 2024, he went viral attempting a hole-in-one over his own house for 16 days before finally succeeding, then in January 2025 gave a fan a chance at $100,000 for the same shot, and the fan made it on his fifth swing.
This year’s series showed how much DeChambeau has grown as a content creator, and the timing matters. LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund said it would stop funding the league after the 2026 season. A new restructuring plan, called “LIV Golf 2.0,” is backed by BC Partners, but it reportedly still needs roughly half of the players owed money by LIV, representing at least two-thirds of the total player claims, to commit by a mid-October deadline before it can move forward. Stars like Jon Rahm and Joaquín Niemann have not publicly confirmed their plans. DeChambeau, by contrast, has reportedly been “all in” on the restructured league.
With his future in competitive golf harder to predict, his YouTube career carries more weight. His channel has grown from roughly 2.4 million subscribers to about 2.9 million in the past 12 months, driven largely by challenge videos with pros and amateurs, following a 2024 MrBeast video that also featured Cristiano Ronaldo. Backyard Games is a good example of why that side of his career could become as important as what he does on the course.
For Taylor, the win is a $100,000 payday and a permanent place in YouTube golf history as the first Backyard Games champion.
Losing may have helped the format more than a win would have, because viewers now know the stakes are real. Whether it holds up without a result like this is what a second season would show. If it returns, sponsor interest and how much the other creators gain from the exposure will be the early signs. Either way, it gives DeChambeau a solid fallback while LIV sorts itself out.